Posted on 01/14/2005 5:42:41 AM PST by alessandrofiaschi
DARMSTADT, Germany - A European space probe plunged into the hazy, mysterious atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan on Friday, and elated mission controllers said it had opened its parachute to slow its descent as it gathers data.
The Huygens probe had successfully restarted its systems and the mission, which could provide clues to how life arose on Earth, was going well, said Roberto Lo Verda, a spokesman for the European Space Agency.
"It has entered the atmosphere, and entered it correctly," Lo Verda said. "We know the batteries are switched on, the parachute has deployed and it has slowed down sufficiently."
Mission officials — who have waited seven years for Huygens to reach its destination — had tears in their eyes as the first signal was picked up, indicating that the probe had successfully powered up dormant systems and begun transmitting to its mother ship, the international Cassini spacecraft.
ESA's science director, David Southwood, said the mission had successfully passed a difficult and critical step. "We didn't promise we could do this. We were pushing the limit just to do this," Southwood said.
Huygens was spun off from Cassini on Christmas Eve to begin its free-fall toward Titan, the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored by spacecraft.
Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th-century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore what Titan's atmosphere is made of and find out whether it has the cold seas of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.
Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.
Its slow parachute descent to the moon's reddish surface was expected to take about 2 1/2 hours, during which it will use a special camera and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of Titan's atmosphere. The data will be transmitted back to Cassini, which will relay it to NASA (news - web sites)'s Deep Space Network in California and on to ESA controllers in Darmstadt, Germany.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.
Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.
"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on earth."
Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's surface upon landing. Scientists don't know exactly what it will hit when it lands at about 20 kilometers per hour.
"It could land on something solid ... it could land in liquid methane, which is what they think a lot of the black seas on Titan are," said Alan Smith, deputy head of operations at ESA. "Because the temperature is so cold and the pressure is so high, gases like ethane and methane exist in liquid form, so it could well land in a sea of methane."
The probe floats and should survive such a landing, despite the temperature of minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit. One hazard would be landing on a solid slope in a position that doesn't permit a strong signal back to Cassini.
Engineers at ESA are counting on the probe having at least three minutes to transmit information and images from Titan's surface, before its battery runs out or Cassini gets out of range.
The Cassini-Huygens mission, a project of NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency, was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.
During the nearly seven years Cassini took to reach the ringed planet, the attached probe was powered through an umbilical cable and awakened from sleep mode every six months for tests.
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On the Net:
http://saturn.esa.int
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini
ping
Thank you for the post. I worked with the European Space Agency on one of my projects. :-)
I'll be checking out the show on the Discovery Science Channel tonight.
You know....
I really feel sorry for you. I honestly do. I can't even be mad at you for saying that because I feel so bad for you, for what you are missing out on in life.
I hope you get it someday.
Bones
i hear what you are saying. the space missions seem cool, but 3 billion for 3 minutes? seems outrageous.
I guess that chimps and dogs wouldn't be kosher as a stairstep to manned flights either.
Well.... our robots pave the way for us. They measure weather, radiation and the information they gather tell us how to build our ships and equipment in order to get the most out of human exploration safely.
Guess what - the Europeans paid for Huygens.
"Forgive me. I just don't get it. Whose money paid for the three billion it cost for some university geeks to ensure their tenure."
Whose money? The Europeans. That was in the opening paragraph. You paid nothing for this fascinating mission. How's that?
It is exploration at its finest. Exploration and the delight in discovery/new knowledge is one of the things that define our species. Remember, governments funded Columbus, Magellan, Lewis and Clarke, etc. Where would we be if "big science" was never funded?
Seriously, think without the bias for a moment. Who cares what a comet is made of, or what the surface of Titan is composed of, or what the shape of the universe is. What difference does it make? Not one bit. I resent the whole series of space missions that are paid for involuntarily by taxpayers. It is a stupid way to waste time and effort.
Many people care. In fact, the answers from these types of missions are helping us to understand not only the formation and evolution of the solar system and planets, but the universe itself.
I am one of those that would see manned exploration. Get us into space permanently. Bring the private sector in. Get manufacturing with low G or no G materials. Build a base on the moon. Use it as a permanent space station and build ships there for the trips to other planets. If we hadn't quit in the 70's maybe today that would have been a manned mission orbiting Titan looking for minerals or recoverable resources.
This is an endeavor that is going to take centuries. It will happen, but not as fast as you think it can.
Maybe Mars would be inhabited with a colony now and since necessity is the mother of all invention maybe new technologies would have advanced us all in countless ways. I'm sorry. This is a poor waste of money in an ineffective way. We could learn so much more by going there.
I completely disagree. Think of the cost difference of sending a manned mission as apposed to a robotic one. Before we landed men on the Moon, we sent robots first. Manned missions will come later. However, today we can send robots and learn about this solar system we live in.
The orbital mechanics of this mission are truly beyond my comprehension.
Per NASA TV.
OTOH, I have to take exception to this:
"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on earth."
I'm more inclined to believe that Titan is made up of much the same stuff as Saturn. It might offer interesting insights on the formation of the gas planets, which would be swell. But I seriously doubt that Titan will be remotely like one of the inner planets.
It is really unbelievable. This thing has been on nothing but inertial guidance for the last three weeks. The calculations regarding speed, orbital relativity, gravitational factors, timing, and a host of other things is phenomenal!
A lot of money, true, but we need dreams.
You can check out the latest for yourself..
Latest updates can be seen here.
The link is to the Space.com / Cassini-Huygens page..
There is a short "blurb" of info..
Below that is the latest updates.. ( last update, 9:20 EST )
Too bad they didn't see fit to provide Huygens with RTGs!
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